Nogays - Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Urban Nogays are employed in industrial or other urban occupations. Rural Nogays raise livestock or agricultural products as members of collective or state farms.

Political Organization. The Nogays are considered one of the constituent nationalities of Daghestan, but they do not have any special territorial-administrative recognition of their separate identity except as the indigenous population of one raion. Nogays outside Daghestan have no territorial-administrative status at all. Since the establishment of the Daghestan ASSR (1921) and the Stavropol Krai (1943) and the reestablishment of the Karachay-Cherkess AO and the Chechen-Ingush ASSR (1957), changes have been limited to the renaming of towns and raions.

Social Control. The community traditionally would attempt, through mediation and restitution, to arrive at a peaceful resolution of incidents such as murder. The murderer was known as kan ishken (blood drinker) or kanlï yav (blood enemy); if the death was accidental he was known as kan yavgan (splattered with blood). If the matter could not be settled in a peaceful manner, the murder was to be avenged by the closest male relative through the father's line. Sometimes the murderer had to leave his village for a period of years. It is believed that this practice ended in the Soviet period. Religious (Sharia) courts also existed in the pre-Soviet period but were replaced by the Soviet court system. Conflict was rare in Nogay society.